


To Be, Without

by spj



Series: Trick or Treat! [9]
Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Buddhism, Gen, Genjo Sanzo/Son Goku if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spj/pseuds/spj
Summary: Sanzo's gun goes missing in the middle of a battle. He has to figure out what to do after that.





	To Be, Without

**Author's Note:**

> hey i finally finished fini  
> im working very slowly through them  
> its been, uh, to say the least, a terrible month but just a terrible weekend in general... but writing is fun and it helps!
> 
> i coudlnt figure out how to get through the middle or to the end so if it seems sort of staggered, thats why sorry TT^TT
> 
> anyway, this isnt what you meant by the prompt either but i swear its closer in spirit......... haha
> 
> Halloween Advent, Day 9  
> Prompt: Carving

In all the possible ways the stupid trip could go wrong, Genjo never anticipated _this_ particular way.

They were fighting a typical youkai raid when some lucky schmuck got a good knock on his gun and sent it flying out of his hand and into the fucking river.

It fell in with a satisfying plop.

Genjo stood there, simply stunned for a few seconds, before turning the full force of his glare on the unlucky youkai. “Are you _fucking_ serious?”

The youkai didn’t seem to be aware of how much trouble she was really in. “Ha ha!” she laughed. “Now you won’t be able to fight back!”

Genjo couldn’t believe how fucking stupid she was.

Anger lit him on fire. Genjo could barely contain the energy in his body enough to sit down in his meditation position.

“You fucking _imbecile_ ,” he seethed, shaking tightly. “You motherfucking _rat-livered pig_.”

“I resent that,” Hakkai said from twenty feet away.

Genjo ignored him. “You _motherfucking snake-tongued pig-bellied idiot_ ,” he growled.

Genjo’s unusual display of unfettered anger prompted Gojyo to turn just in time to see Genjo activate his sutra. Gojyo barely had time to shout, “Hit the deck!” before Genjo’s sutra exploded outwards in a ball of explosive light.

Reacting to his heightened emotion, Genjo’s sutra whipped out quickly and ferociously, slamming indiscriminately into trees, rocks, and youkai. Some simply evaporated from the sheer force of the holy power. Others exploded upon contact. When the light died down, only a sea of blood, guts, and bone remained.

It was the fastest battle they ever fought.

Goku was the first to recover when it seemed like the danger to their own lives was gone. “Eewww gross,” he complained, standing up and shaking youkai guts from his hair like a dog.

“I do think staying a little longer by the river is warranted,” Hakkai agreed. His glasses were opaque with blood, and he tried to smile at Goku but turned his head in the wrong direction.

Gojyo didn’t give a shit about how he looked. He stomped over to Genjo. “Hey, dude, what the _fuck_? What gives, man? You trying to reach the West without the three of us or something? If you wanted us to fuck off you could have just said something instead of trying to kill us!”

Genjo didn’t grace Gojyo with an answer, ignoring him in favor of standing up and walking back towards the jeep.

“Hey, did you fucking hear me – ”

No one had seen him move, but Hakkai was suddenly standing behind Gojyo and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Gojyo. Stop.”

Gojyo whipped around to argue, but Hakkai’s grip became tight enough to threaten breaking Gojyo’s bones if he tried to move.

Gojyo narrowed his eyes at Hakkai. “Fine,” he said, although it was clear he didn’t think this was fine at all. “I’ll wait. This isn’t over.”

Genjo ignored them and climbed into the front seat of Jeep. “Oi, monkey,” he said, crossing his arms and looking away from Goku.

Goku perked up like a dog.

“My gun fell into the water. Find it.”

Goku seemed confused, but not willing to argue. “Okay, Sanzo,” he said agreeably. “I’m gonna take a bath too.”

“Che.” Genjo lit up a cigarette. “Do what you like.”

“I think Gojyo and I will also go clean ourselves, Sanzo,” Hakkai said, already dragging Gojyo towards the water. “I think Jeep will be quite cross with us if we dirty him in this way.”

“Whatever.” Genjo didn’t want to be around those two dipshits anyway. He didn’t want to be around _anyone_. The entire trip had been nothing but fucking torture from day one, and Genjo knew that’s how Their Bitchiness wanted it. All this time wasted herding around a bunch of pricks who never knew when to leave well enough alone that he could have spent on the road. He’d probably have been halfway to India by now. Instead, he was waiting for a bunch of shitty assholes to finish getting clean.

The thought of having to interact with any of them again made the veins in his head throb, and he lit up another cigarette with more force than strictly necessary.

“Sanzo, that’s not good for you.” Goku emerged from the forest, sopping wet.

Genjo noticed immediately that Goku was being more careful than usual. He had approached from the front of the car, when the river was located behind it, and he walked slowly and purposefully to telegraph his every move.

Sanzo by habit reached into his sleeves to point his gun at Goku’s head, but his fingers grasped at air and he remembered that he’d sent Goku to find it. He settled for moving his hands into the sutra-chanting position. “What, Goku.”

Goku hung his head. “I… I didn’t find your gun. I’m sorry. Me ‘n Hakkai ‘n even Gojyo looked for ages. I went a few hundred _li_ downstream ‘cos I thought it might’ve gotten carried away but I didn’t see anything. Hakkai even shook down the river spirit – he got really scary and the stupid kappa had to hold him back but the river spirit still said he didn’t have it. I dunno where it went. I’m so sorry, I’m really, really sorry.”

Anger welled up again, shaking his muscles to the bone. The urge to commit violence was overwhelming, except now Genjo didn’t have anything to commit violence _with_.

Genjo wrapped his hands tightly around each other until his fingers turned white. “You idiot monkey,” he said quietly.

That, more than anything else, seemed to subdue Goku. His eyes dropped, and he looked more lost than Genjo had seen him in a long time. “Sorry,” Goku said.

 

When they finally pulled into a town, Genjo bullied Hakkai into getting him a private room, even though Hakkai gave him the disapproving eyebrows he usually reserved for Gojyo inappropriately fucking women.

Genjo couldn’t feel too bad about it. He needed some peace and quiet after that fucking disaster of a day.

As soon as the innkeeper handed Hakkai the keys, Genjo swiped his and made a beeline for the stairs. “I’m going to sleep,” he said. “Don’t you dare fucking disturb me.”

“Hey, Sanzo, you’re not – ” Goku began, but Gojyo immediately clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Fine, Your Prissyness,” he called after Genjo. “We’ll just eat _all_ your food!”

Genjo flipped them both the bird over his shoulder.

Once he was finally inside his own room, he locked the door, turned off the lights, and laid down on the bed, fully intent on falling asleep right then and there.

But he couldn’t.

It was too fucking quiet, too fucking empty, and he was too _fucking_ vulnerable without his gun.

Genjo punched his pillow in frustration and immediately regretted it when he didn’t feel the hard barrel of his gun underneath it.

This was bullshit; he was never getting to sleep like this.

Resigned to another sleepless night (even without Goku keeping him up with his snoring), Genjo rearranged his pillows on the floor and wrapped his sutra around himself.

There was only one thing to do on a sleepless night: meditate.

Koumyou used to make him do that – mediate if he couldn’t sleep. He said it’d calm his mind, soothe his spirit, and help connect him to the dream world.

Genjo had thought that was a load of bullshit. If mediation had ever helped him sleep, it was only from sheer boredom.

However, after Koumyou died and he had to leave the only place he’d ever considered a real home, he found himself meditating more and more. At first he just found it a convenient excuse to not talk to anyone. People tended to give a wide berth to a monk who looked like he was communing with the higher world. After a while, though, he started to turn to it for reasons besides shutting himself from the world. He’d mediate in the morning to help him face the world; he’d mediate to clear his mind before making any big decisions; now, he meditated at night to shut out the three squawking stooges.

Each time he mediated, he tried to find that calm that Koumyou had once described to him:

“ _It feels like being a flower, I think,_ ” Koumyou had said. “ _There is no past, present, future. You simply_ be _, and you come into contact with your own existence._ ”

Genjo didn’t know what the _fuck_ Koumyou was talking about.

He’d never experienced ‘being.’ He was calmer, clearer, and more effective after mediating, and that’s what mattered to him. He didn’t see the point in trying to ‘be.’ ‘Being’ wasn’t a choice for anyone – one _had_ to ‘be.’ Why would he bother seeking it out?

Just as Genjo was getting ready to pull himself from his meditative state and actually go the fuck to sleep, he heard a knock on his door.

Genjo waited.

Goku peeked his head in. “Hey, Sanzo? Can I come in?”

Genjo rolled his eyes. Of course it was Goku. “Just shut the fucking door behind you.”

Goku gingerly stepped into the room and at the entrance, as if he were afraid Genjo had laid traps that would kill him if he went too far. He fidgeted. “Um,” he said. His stomach rumbled threateningly.

Genjo’s eye twitched. “What.”

“Um… I, uh, found this. Thought you might want it. I’m going to bed now seeyoubye!” Goku thrust a long, nearly wrapped brown package at Genjo before scrambling out the room, forgetting to even close it behind him.

Genjo was too stunned to stop him. By the time he gathered enough wits to shout, “I said close the fucking door!” Goku was already safely in Hakkai and Gojyo’s room and out of sight.

Genjo turned his attention to the package Goku had brought. What did Goku say again? “Found this”?

Genjo lifted the package by the corner. Bullshit. It was clearly store-bought, and it had been so carefully wrapped that there wasn’t even a speck of dust on it. What the fuck did Goku waste their money on this time?

When he finally tore open the wrapping, he realized why Goku had been so nervous.

It was a _sword_.

And it wasn’t just any sword, but a _steel_ sword, finely wrought, and wicked sharp. It must have cost a small fortune – something they didn’t have, because _someone_ lost the fucking credit card again.

Goku must have given up an arm and a leg for this. Or – Genjo’s lips thinned, remembering how Goku’s stomach had gurgled – perhaps his stomach.

Genjo held the sword up and tested its weight. It was perfectly balanced, and when he swung a couple times, he found that it responded with subtle grace to his every movement.

Genjo nodded.

It would do.

 

It seemed that somehow, word of Genjo Sanzo sleeping alone had flown all across town, because apparently every youkai in a five-kilometer radius decided to visit.

Genjo found it… different, to say the least. Without his gun, he had to get up close and personal to each and every youkai, and it involved a lot more moving than he was used to. He couldn’t just shoot everyone that came near; he had to actively dodge, weave, attack.

It was tiring.

But it felt _exhilarating_.

Adrenaline pounded in his ears has he carved a path through the battle, blocking an attack from behind, ducking under a knife and slashing into a youkai from the front.

He couldn’t think and he could hardly breathe and yet he knew with certainty that he was alive, with every ragged breath, with every fevered pulse. There was nothing standing in his way. He could simply _be_.

A tiny grin curved his lips as he charged at yet another youkai.

Alright, Bodhisattva.

It’s your move.

.

.

.

.

. 

(The Bitch later admitted to taking his gun to teach him a lesson and once he had it back he immediately shelved the sword in favor of his preferred weapon. Goku looked a little sad, but he’d get over it.

Genjo didn’t need the sword anymore.

After all, now that he knew what it felt to _be_ , he would never forget it.)


End file.
